Three Conservative MPs have come out publicly to call for Liz Truss to quit, as pressure builds on the Prime Minister.
Crispin Blunt, the Conservative MP for Reigate who was a justice minister in the early years of David Cameron’s premiership, told Channel 4’s Andrew Neil Show: “I think the game is up and it’s now a question as to how the succession is managed.”
He was followed by Andrew Bridgen on Sunday evening, who told the Telegraph newspaper: “We cannot carry on like this.”
Mr Bridgen, who backed Rishi Sunak in the leadership contest over the summer, said: “Our country, its people and our party deserve better.”
Tory MP Jamie Wallis also confirmed that he had written to Ms Truss, asking her to stand down.
It comes as other senior figures within the parliamentary party expressed deep unease with Ms Truss’s leadership but stopped short of calling for her to go.
Mr Blunt, who backed Jeremy Hunt in the leadership contest, released a statement on Sunday in which he said that most of his colleagues “clearly understand that Prime Minister Truss’s authority is now fatally damaged”.
“She has to go now as she cannot win nor sustain the confidence of her colleagues, far less the public and a relentless media.
“The principal emotional reactions to her public presentation is now a mixture of anger, contempt and pity.
“It’s a blinding glimpse of the obvious that this cannot and should not continue.”
He called for former leadership contenders Mr Sunak, Mr Hunt and Penny Mordaunt to come together to steer the party out of the current crisis.
Tory MP Jamie Wallis published the letter he sent to Ms Truss, which said that he did not think she could unite the divided party.
Mr Wallis, who came out as trans earlier this year, told the Prime Minister: “Watching senior colleagues exploit the issue of transgender rights and weaponise it in order to score cheap political points was extremely unpleasant.”
He goes on: “You chose not to challenge this behaviour and have now chosen to have those same colleagues sit alongside you in your government.”
Earlier Conservative former chief whip Andrew Mitchell, who also backed Mr Hunt in the leadership contest, told BBC Radio 4’s The World This Weekend programme: “The Conservative parliamentary party has always shown itself clear, and indeed ruthless, in making changes if required.
“If the Prime Minister proves unable to govern effectively she will have to stand down, and the parliamentary party will make that clear. And indeed the mechanism is not important. It’s that reality that would assert itself.
“But we should all be trying to help her to succeed and to get it right.”
Mr Hunt, widely seen now as the most powerful man in Government, insisted on Sunday that “the Prime Minister’s in charge”.
He also told BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg that after two failed leadership bids, his desire for the top job has been “clinically excised”.
But former chancellor George Osborne, who is no longer an MP, told the Andrew Neil Show that Ms Truss will most likely be gone “before Christmas”.
Asked if Ms Truss can survive, he said: “Probably not. She is pino – Prime Minister in name only at the moment.”
He acknowledged “things are unpredictable”, and said it is “possible to imagine a situation” where she “completely resets”, albeit that is a “long shot”.
Conservative MP Alicia Kearns, who recently became the chairwoman of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, told Times Radio it is a “very difficult one” whether Ms Truss should stay on in the top job.
Asked if Ms Truss could or should survive in Number 10, Ms Kearns said: “Ultimately it is a very difficult one because I think, you know, we’ve had the questions around our moral competency. We’ve now got questions around our fiscal competency.
“I don’t want further questions around even our ability to continue to govern as a party and our ability to stay united. It’s an incredibly difficult one and, ultimately, I need to listen to colleagues and speak to colleagues over coming days.
“But do we need a fundamental reset? Without question.”
Senior Conservative MP Robert Halfon said he wants an “apology and a fundamental reset”.
Mr Halfon, chairman of the Commons Education Committee, declined to deny that MPs are considering installing a new leader.
“We’re all talking to see what can be done about it,” he said.
“I worry that, over the past few weeks, the Government has looked like libertarian jihadists and treated the whole country as kind of laboratory mice on which to carry out ultra, ultra free market experiments. And this is not where the country is. There’s been one horror story after another,” he added.
Mr Halfon said he is not calling on Ms Truss to go but told Times Radio the Government needs a reset “pretty soon”, adding: “I can’t give you hours or days.”
Former health secretary Matt Hancock said the Prime Minister needs to reshuffle her Cabinet.
Speaking to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg about the prospect of a leadership contest, Mr Hancock said “I don’t think we’re there yet,” but he added she needs to do three things: deliver an economically credible plan, reshuffle her Cabinet, and restore trust.
“She needs to bring the broad Conservative Party in her Government. She needs a reshuffle,” he said.
